Shoe

ABSTRACT

A shoe particularly a sportshoe, has a side lacing (1) with a slit (2) extending from an edge (4) of a foot opening (3) toward a toe area at the outside of the shoe over a part of the upper (5) of the shoe, and a tongue (10) covering from below the side lacing, said tongue being according to the invention fastened to the upper with a stitching (11) located within an area extending substantially about a central line (6) at a distance from and along said slit (2), and extending, as seen in the longitudinal direction of the shoe, from the forward end (12) of said slit toward the foot opening (3) over a distance of least one third of the slit&#39;s length.

This invention relates to shoes, particularly shoes where considerablestrain is placed on the foot.

Previous development of sport shoes have aimed at producing shoes withgood fit and a high degree of comfort, suited for these purposes invarying ways. However, in which respect an invention actually improvedfit and comfort has not always been made clear. This invention considersthree key problems central to any good shoe design. For sport shoes orother types of shoes, these problems are: stability, flexibility, andfit. A "comfortable" sport shoe must possess a sufficient amount of allthree characteristics.

Stability of the shoe contributes to keeping the foot in the correctposition. That is, the bones, tendons, and ligaments are kept in thecorrect position to each other regardless of the degree and kind of footmovement. The desirable degree of stability is to a large extentdependent on the sport for which the shoe is intended.

Flexbility is desirable since the foot should conform in innumerable,different, and anatomically acceptable ways so as to bend naturallywhere required, if it is to be experienced by the user as beingcomfortable.

Generally, stability and flexibility are characteristics which opposeeach other; the more of one the less of the other.

One aim of this invention is to significantly counter the viewpoint thatstability and flexibility are opposites, and that more of onenecessarily means less of the other.

The fit of the shoe is the remaining key factor, if a high degree ofstability and flexibility has been achieved. With shoes according tothis invention, the degree of fit achieved actually depends on the samemeans used for achieving high degree of stability and high degree offlexibility.

For this purpose, a shoe, particularly a sport shoe, having side lacesextending substantially in the longitudinal direction of the shoe andplaced on the outside as seen from a longitudinal central line runningfrom the shoe's forward edge of the foot opening to the front of theshoe, and a tongue lying under the lace and extending to cover fromabove a user's foot, has characteristics according to one or several ofthe appending claims.

Shoes according to the claims have, in testing, shown substantialimprovements, compared with previously known sport shoes. Theseimprovements are particularly noticeable with regard to how the shoeforms to the foot in many ways, giving the foot stability even afterlong use, as well as absence of problems often arising in combinationwith tongue and laces.

Shoes with a tongue covering a major part of the foot's upper side arepreviously known (U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,182) in the sense that such shoessimulate a smooth and soft inner shoe. However, such shoes is realityhave not fulfilled expectations, in that the problem of tongue movementin the transverse and longitudinal directions has caused inconveniencedue to wrinkling or other undesirable deformations of the tongue. Priorart regards these deformations as a serious and important problem (U.S.Pat. No. 3,299,542), but before the appearance of the present inventionthere has been no really satisfactory solution, even if, on the otherhand, tongue movement in modern sport shoes with relatively smalltongues has not been a real problem. But when a tongue is made large tocover major parts of the upper and side of the foot, then tongueslippage is a serious problem, as is wrinkling.

Fastening the tongue according to the invention solves the problem oftongue slippage and deformation by very simple means, thereby achievingthe important benefits of large tongues, namely to cover the foot andsimulate an inner shoe, and simultaneously providing high stability andgood fit.

Fastening the tongue according to this invention inherently requiresside laces, which is known per se (FR-PS No. 2000 667, SE-PS No. 88252)and by which the pressure on the foot of a normal central lace, actingfrom above on the middle of the foot, a pressure sensitive area, isreplaced by a relatively even pressure of a smooth upper.

Even if fastening the tongue according to this invention, in combinationwith side laces, makes possible good stability, flexibility, and fit,and this for essentially all foot shapes, nevertheless flexibility maybe unsatisfactory for shoes of certain purposes. Specifically, the shoemay be too stiff when the foot must be able to adopt the most varyingpositions. Therefore, it may be necessary or an advantage when using theway of fastening the tongue, according to the invention, to have anumber of V-shaped recesses along the lace slit in a way that will bedescribed in the following.

In the following the invention is illustrated in detail, reference beingmade to the enclosed drawing in which:

FIG. 1 shows a soccer shoe according to the invention seen inperspective, and

FIG. 2 illustrates a design for a tongue according to FIG. 1.

The shoe illustrated by FIG. 1 has a side lace 1 running in thelongitudinal direction of the shoe around a slit 2 from the edge of thefoot opening 3, angled forward on the outside of the shoe over part ofthe upper 5 towards the toe area. As preferred, the lace slit 2 extendsbetween half and three quarters of the distance between the front edge 4of the foot opening 3 and the forward edge of the upper 5 toe area, atthe outside of a line 6 from the forward highest position 7 of the footopening to the forward edge 8 of the area, said line hereinafter calledthe central line of the shoe.

According to this invention the tongue 10 is fastened to the upper withone or several seams, or stitchings, within an area that extendscentrally in the longitudinal direction of the shoe from the forward end12 of the slit 2 in the direction toward the forward part of the footopening 4, that is, in the longitudinal direction of the shoe in orclose to said central line.

This stitching consists preferably of one or several continuous seams,which, however, do not extend all way up to the foot opening 4, but overa distance of between one-third and two-thirds of the distance betweenslit end 12 and foot opening 4. This fastening of the tongue to theupper can be done with the same effect by means of a number of pointwisearranged or transversely extending stitches distributed over said area.As shown on the drawing, two longitudinally placed and parallel seams,or stitches, 11 are placed at equal distances from the central line onthe upper. These seams should not be placed at a larger distance fromthe central line than 0.75 cm up to 1 cm, otherwise the ability of thetongue to conform to the user's foot would be considerably reduced. Inthe longitudinal direction of the shoe, the seam or seams should not beplaced closer to the forward edge of the foot opening than 2 cm andpreferably not closer than 4 cm, but yet run along the central line forat least half the upper length from the forward end of the slit in thedirection toward the front edge of the foot opening.

In the drawing, the fastening of the tongue is shown in the preferredembodiment by which the tongue, in addition to being fastened by alongitudinal seam 11, is fastened to the upper with at least one seam 13running transversely over at least between one-third and two-thirds, andpreferably about half, of the periphery of the upper, from the centralline, as seen in a cross section, and in front of the slit's forward end12. On the other hand, it has been experienced that it isdisadvantageous to fasten the tongue transversely on the opposite sideas well.

Due to the way in which the tongue is fastened to the upper, the lowerand upper sections of the tongue are allowed to move inside the shoe,under the upper, so that the tongue can adapt flexibly to feet ofdifferent shapes, without the necessary stability being lost, or thetongue being deformed when the shoe twists and bends. The way the tongueis fastened to the upper makes possible the use of a tongue which isconsiderably larger than is possible--with a view to the use of the shoein practice--with a conventional fastening of the tongue. Thispossibility means an important advantage because using a large tonguecovering and surrounding most of the upper and side parts of the footachieves a feeling of the shoe being custom-made for the user's foot,this in spite of the fact that it is well adaptable for users withextremely varying foot shapes.

The shape of a preferred tongue is shown in FIG. 2. This tongue isessentially heart-shaped and protrudes beyond the transverse seam 13 sothat its forward part will extend free under the upper in the toe area,while its rear part 10b protrudes beyond the forward edge 4 outside thefoot opening at least 0.5 cm and preferably about 1 cm. In the forwardsection the tongue should cover the toes, contributing to a feeling of acomfortable adjustment to the user's foot. With at least the samemeasures the tongue should, for the purpose of reducing pressures at theedge of the foot opening, extend beyond said edges at least as farbackwardly as to the ankle portion of the opening's edge.

In connection with the central longitudinal fastening of the tongue tothe upper as described, it has been found that an extremely goodadaptation of the tongue to the foot, particularly when using thick orstiff leather, is obtained by manufacturing the tongue from two halves21, which are substantially reversely equiform and sewn together alongarc-shaped edges 22. When the halves are arranged in a plane as shown inthe figure, symmetrically about a central line 20 constituting a chordof the arcs extending between forward 23 and rearward 24 ends of theedges, the arcs have each a height of between 0.3 and 0.6 cm.

For a shoe according to the invention an additional improvement inflexibility can be attained by a specific design of the side lace. Thisimprovement is achieved by the lace slit 2, FIG. 1, at its forward edge12 having a V-shaped recess 15 arranged at the end of the lace slit nearthe toe area, the two additional V-shaped recesses 16 and 17, beingtransverse to central line 6. The latter, together with optionaladditional recesses correspondingly arranged along the slit, are placedjuxtaposed so that their open ends overlap over part of their length.Experiments have shown that these recesses should not have sharp pointsbecause this results in specific pressure lines or points; thereforethese points should be rounded to achieve as even a pressuredistribution as possible.

To cover the V-shaped recess 17 when the shoe is used by persons havinghigh insteps, the tongue's outer edge 10d may advantageously have anarc-shaped portion 10h with a maximum width of between 8 and 15 mm,measured from the adjacent tongue edge portions.

We claim:
 1. A shoe, particularly a sport shoe, having a side lacing,extending substantially in the longitudinal direction of the shoe on theoutside thereof beside, when seen from above, a longitudinal centralline of the shoe, extending from the forward central portion of the footopening to the foremost point of the toe area, said side lacing beingformed by a slit extending from the edge of the foot opening in saiddirection toward the toe area at the outside of the shoe over a part ofthe shoe's upper, and a tongue covering from below the side lacing andportions of the upper above a user's foot, in which the tongue (10) isfastened to the upper (5) with a stitching (11) located within an areaextending substantially about said central line (6) at a distance fromand along said slit (2), and extending, as seen in the longitudinaldirection of the shoe, from the forward end (12) of said slit toward thefoot opening (3) over a distance of least one third of the slit'slength.
 2. Shoe according to claim 1, said stitching (11) ending, in thedirection toward the foot opening (3), at a distance of at least 2 cmand preferably at least 4 cm from the forward edge (7) of the footopening.
 3. Shoe according to any one of the previous claims, saidtongue (10) consisting of two flat portions (21) which are substantiallyreversedly equiform about a central line (20) of the tongue, edges (22)of said portions extending along said tongue central line being cutconcavely in arcs, each having, relative to a chord between ends (23,24)of said edges (22), a height of between 0.3 and 0.6 cm, said portions(21) being joined together along said edges.
 4. Shoe according to anyone of the previous claims, said slit (2) having at its forward end (12)a substantially V-shaped recess (15) extending transversely in thedirection toward said central line (6) and said stitching (11).
 5. Shoeaccording to any one of the previous claims, said slit (2) in each oneof its edges having at least one substantially V-shaped recess (16,17,resp.) located between the forward end (12) of the slit (2) and the footopening (3).